Living with Chronic Pain (My Journey) Part 1

Living with Chronic Pain is something you will never understand until you are living it! I know this because 12 years ago I started the journey with Chronic Pain and it is something I will never escape. Chronic pain is something that’s with you all the time, you don’t sleep because the pain is to bad, you don’t go anywhere because there is no energy to go, and you isolate yourself from family and friends because you know, from experience, no one is going to understand!

My journey began after a auto-semi accident almost 12 years ago. It’s been a journey I never wanted to go on and certainly didn’t want to stay on for the rest of my life. I came away from the accident with a broken sternum, damage to both knees, a ruptured disc in my back; that caused permanent damage to my sciatic nerve, two herniated disc in my neck, chronic migraines, Fibromyalgia, and eventually Lupus. My goal in writing this article is to allow my readers who don’t live with Chronic Pain a window into what life is like with it, for my reader with family or friends who suffer with chronic pain more understanding of what your loved one goes through, and to my readers who do live with Chronic Pain to know you are not alone and there is life worth living despite your pain.
After the accident I spent several days in the hospital, when I finally got home I had no idea the life I was facing. This was by far not my first auto accident and unfortunately not my last, but by far my worst. My injuries required multiple surgeries, over a year of physical therapy, and many, many bottles of pills. This was a huge problem for me, being a believer in natural medicine and having no desire to journey into the world of western medicine I had never even considered!
As a natural health practitioner I tried to treat my pain with every alternative therapy I could find, but sadly nothing was ever quite enough to make my pain bearable or give me back the life I had known before. I sought out physical therapy that included massage therapy, acupuncture, chiropractic, and supplements for pain and inflammation, but to no avail, I had to keep falling back on pain management.
I am fortunate in that my family is loving, caring, understanding, and helpful. They know the person I was before and the person I have become with the ever-present monster of Chronic pain. I absolutely would not have come as far as I have in the past 12 years without their love and support!
Over the years, as I continued to go to pain management, the doctors just prescribed more and stronger pills, surgery and shots in my back, shots in my neck and the back of my skull for the debilitating migraines, that came along with the severe whiplash and disc damage in my neck. It was a mary-go-round I desperately want to get off of but had no idea how to get off.
Then in 2010, after 10 years of living with the monster, a wake up call came in the form of yet another surgery, this one had nothing to do with my injuries, however it helped me realize the life I wasn’t living. After my out-patience procedure my pain was off the charts, so bad in fact that I ended up staying in the hospital over night and almost going into shock, because they could not control my pain. With teeth chattering and body shaking uncontrollably I begged for relief, but relief was not to be had. despite three IV’s (because I kept blowing veins), multiple pills, and constant nursing my pain was out of control. I realized that all the pain management, for all those years had only brought me to a point where pain was no longer controllable. See all that pain management had only made my body toxic and so adapted to pain medication that in the end the pain medication didn’t work anymore. Come back next week to read the rest of the story….